THE GROWING CHALLENGE OF BRAND IMPERSONATION
Brand impersonation has become one of the most damaging threats facing organizations in the digital age. It involves malicious actors mimicking a brand’s identity across various online channels to deceive customers, employees, or partners. This can manifest in numerous forms, including look-alike domains, counterfeit websites, unauthorized social media profiles, fake mobile apps, and fake ads. The consequences are severe, ranging from reputational damage and loss of consumer trust to direct financial fraud and security breaches. As organizations increasingly rely on digital platforms for their operations and marketing, the need for robust brand protection has never been more critical.
Brand fraud protection is increasingly vital as fraud incidents rise, with 70% of consumers experiencing fraud at least once and 40% experiencing it multiple times, according to a global SAS study. This surge has led 89% of consumers to demand more robust safeguards from organizations. Critically, two-thirds of consumers are willing to switch providers if they experience fraud or if another company offers better protection, underscoring the importance of robust fraud defenses for retaining customers in a competitive market.
However, organizations face significant challenges in managing brand protection effectively:
1.Lack of Visibility Across Digital Channels: Brand impersonation often occurs across multiple platforms, including social media, websites, and search engines. Without comprehensive visibility, teams are unable to effectively monitor and manage all the channels where their brand might be at risk.
2.High Volume of Brand Mentions to Manage: With the vast amount of data generated online, distinguishing between legitimate mentions and potential threats is a significant challenge. Teams are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, making it difficult to focus on the most critical issues.
3.Inability to Quickly Mitigate Brand Abuse: In today’s fast-paced digital environment, the speed at which a brand can detect and address impersonation or misuse is crucial. Many organizations struggle to respond swiftly to these threats, leading to prolonged exposure and potential damage.
4.Limited Time, Expertise, and Budget: Many organizations do not have the necessary resources— whether personnel, expertise, or budget—to dedicate to ongoing brand protection efforts. This limitation makes it difficult to sustain an effective brand protection strategy over time.
In this review, we will explore Fortra’s Digital Brand Protection Solution, a comprehensive suite designed to tackle these challenges head-on. We will dissect three core services—Domain Monitoring, social media protection, and counterfeit protection—each tailored to address specific types of digital brand abuse. By the end of this review, you will have a detailed understanding of how Fortra’s solution operates, its key features, and its competitive advantages in the cybersecurity market.
1.DOMAIN MONITORING: SAFEGUARDING THE FIRST LINE OF DIGITAL DEFENSE
What Is Fortra’s Domain Monitoring Service?
Fortra’s Domain Monitoring service is a vital component of their digital brand protection solution, designed to detect and mitigate threats associated with malicious web domain activities. Domain-based attacks, such as phishing sites, typosquatting, and look-alike domains, are some of the most common forms of brand impersonation. These attacks often serve as the initial vector for broader cyberattacks that target customers, employees, and other stakeholders.
Organizations face several key challenges when it comes to Domain Monitoring, which include the overwhelming noise generated by domain-related threats, making it challenging to detect real risks effectively. Additionally, there is a significant lack of visibility into the lifecycle of both new and existing domains that are used maliciously, hindering timely threat identification. Furthermore, many organizations struggle due to insufficient relationships within the digital ecosystem and a lack of knowledge necessary to mitigate domain threats quickly, coupled with limited expertise, time, and budget to dedicate to comprehensive Domain Monitoring efforts.
KEY FEATURES AND BENEFITS
Fortra’s Domain Monitoring service leverages a combination of automated and manual processes to provide comprehensive coverage across various domain-related threats. Key features include:
•Daily Detection Across a Wide Variety of Domain Intelligence Sources: Fortra’s platform conducts daily scans of over 2,000 top-level domains (TLDs), including both gTLDs and ccTLDs, as well as SSL certificate registrations, passive DNS data, and DNS zone files, enabling it to detect a wide range of domain threats, including domain spoofing and look-alike domains. This ensures that any newly registered or modified domains that could harm your brand are quickly identified.
•Human Curation and Threat Ranking: Detected domains are not only automatically flagged but also reviewed and monitored by expert analysts. These analysts rank the severity of threats based on various parameters, which includes changes to website content, WHOIS information, A-records, MX records, SSL certificates, and more. This hybrid approach reduces false positives and ensures that only the most relevant threats are escalated.
•Rapid Takedown with Automated Alerts and Detailed Reports: One of the standout features of Fortra’s Domain Monitoring is its ability to facilitate rapid takedown of malicious domains. Leveraging an extensive network of trusted registrar partners and automated kill switches, Fortra ensures the fastest possible removal of threats.
This capability is crucial in minimizing the window of opportunity for threat actors to exploit compromised domains. The service can also strengthen internal security tools by providing additional intelligence to block malicious domains proactively. Clients receive timely alerts and comprehensive reports that provide insights into the severity and nature of the threats. The Domain Monitoring service is further enhanced when combined with Fortra’s Agari DMARC Protection, which helps organizations enforce email authentication protocols to prevent domain spoofing and email-based impersonation attacks. This integration provides a comprehensive defense against both domain and email-based threats.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
Fortra’s Domain Monitoring stands out in the market due to its blend of automation and expert analysis. Unlike many competitors that rely solely on automated systems, Fortra’s inclusion of human curation allows for more accurate threat prioritization and mitigation. This reduces the risk of false positives and ensures that security teams can focus on the most pressing issues. Additionally, Fortra’s established relationships with domain registrars and internet service providers (ISPs) enable quicker takedown of malicious domains, providing a critical edge in time-sensitive situations.
2.SOCIAL MEDIA PROTECTION: DEFENDING BRAND REPUTATION ACROSS DIGITAL PLATFORMS
What Is Fortra’s Social Media Protection Service?
Social media platforms have become a prime target for cybercriminals seeking to exploit brand identities. Fortra’s Social Media Protection service is designed to monitor and mitigate threats across the broad and evolving landscape of social media.
This service addresses issues ranging from account impersonation and financial scams to unauthorized use of brand assets and even physical threats to executives.
Social media platforms have become a prime target for cyber criminals seeking to exploit brand identities.
Organizations face significant challenges when defending against social media threats due to the vast and rapidly evolving landscape of social platforms. The high volume and variety of threats, such as impersonation, fraud, and data leaks, make it difficult for teams to efficiently identify and mitigate risks. Moreover, the broad reach and ease of use of social media enable threat actors to execute attacks quickly, often outpacing an organization’s ability to respond. Compounding these issues is the lack of established relationships with platform providers and proper access needed to swiftly take down harmful profiles and posts, making it challenging to protect the brand across all digital channels.
“Excellent organization and staff to deal with, the blanket price for unlimited take downs during an incident pays for itself quickly. When everything is working the time from detection to take down can be exceptional.” – IT Security Architect, Banking
KEY FEATURES AND BENEFITS
Fortra’s Social Media Protection service is comprehensive, covering a wide array of platforms and threat types:
• Broad Monitoring Across Major and Niche Platforms: Fortra continuously monitors a vast array of social media platforms, forums, and other online repositories. For example, the service collects data from top social media platforms such as Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. It also constantly monitors hundreds of additional sources, including forums, blogs, gripe sites like Glassdoor, and repositories like GitHub, ensuring no stone is left unturned.
The service is designed to adapt to the dynamic nature of social media, ensuring that even new and emerging platforms are included in the monitoring process.
• Curation and Threat Assessment: Fortra uses a combination of sophisticated curation technology and human analysis to collect, identify, classify, and prioritize threats in posts, comments, profiles, and pages. This dual approach allows the service to distinguish between informational and actionable threats, reducing noise and false positives, and instead focusing on high-risk incidents. For example, executive impersonation or leaked credentials may trigger automatic mitigation, while less critical threats might be flagged for informational purposes.
• Optimized Takedown Processes: With strong relationships across social media platforms, Fortra’s team takes swift action to address identified threats, leveraging established protocols and platform specific processes to remove harmful content. The service is designed to ensure that actionable threats are dealt with promptly, minimizing the potential damage of social media threats on brand reputation.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
Fortra’s Social Media Protection service is distinguished by its deep integration with social media platforms and its ability to scale across a wide range of sources. Unlike competitors that may focus only on major platforms, Fortra’s solution extends to niche sites and forums, offering much broader coverage. Additionally, the service’s ability to finely tune threat response based on client-specific needs ensures that mitigation efforts are both effective and efficient.
3.COUNTERFEIT PROTECTION: SAFEGUARDING AGAINST FAKE GOODS AND FRAUDULENT ADS
What Is Fortra’s Counterfeit Protection Service?
Counterfeit goods and fraudulent advertisements are a significant threat to brands, especially in industries where intellectual property is a key asset. Fortra’s Counterfeit Protection service is designed to detect and mitigate the spread of counterfeit products and unauthorized use of brand assets across digital channels. Organizations face significant challenges in defending against counterfeit threats, particularly due to the scale and complexity of these attacks.
Counterfeit goods and fraudulent advertisements pose significant challenges for organizations due to the scale and complexity of these attacks.
One of the primary issues is the inability to quickly take down fake profiles, counterfeit ads, and fraudulent websites that damage brand reputation and result in financial losses. Additionally, there is often a lack of visibility across the multiple channels where these counterfeit activities occur, making it difficult to identify and mitigate real threats efficiently. Compounding these challenges are the limited expertise, time, and budget to monitor and manage counterfeit threats at scale, further hindering organizations’ ability to effectively protect their brand.
One of the primary issues is the inability to quickly take down fake profiles, counterfeit ads, and fraudulent websites that damage brand reputation and result in financial losses. Additionally, there is often a lack of visibility across the multiple channels where these counterfeit activities occur, making it difficult to identify and mitigate real threats efficiently. Compounding these challenges are the limited expertise, time, and budget to monitor and manage counterfeit threats at scale, further hindering organizations’ ability to effectively protect their brand.
KEY FEATURES AND BENEFITS
This service offers a robust set of features to combat counterfeit activities:
• Comprehensive Monitoring: Fortra continuously and broadly monitors social media profiles, domain registrars, search engines, and the open web for counterfeit marketing and websites. This ensures that any unauthorized use of brand logos, images, or content is quickly identified and addressed.
Counterfeit websites can damage brand reputation and result in financial losses.
• Detection and Scoring of Counterfeit Threats: The service employs automated tools to detect counterfeit sites and ads. Following detection, threats identified as malicious are reviewed by human analysts, who verify they are indeed counterfeit and not originating from your brand. Items are then scored based on the potential impact, with high-severity threats prioritized for immediate action.
• Effective Mitigation: Verified counterfeit threats are categorized and escalated for takedown. Fortra’s strong relationships with social media platforms, hosting providers, domain registrars, and search engines facilitate the rapid removal of counterfeit ads and look-alike domains, and the shutdown of infringing websites selling counterfeit goods.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
Fortra’s Counterfeit Protection service excels in its ability to monitor and mitigate threats across multiple channels simultaneously. Its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, combined with expert analysis, ensure that no counterfeit threat goes unnoticed. The service’s effectiveness is further enhanced by Fortra’s established takedown processes, which are faster and more reliable than those offered by many competitors.
CONCLUSION
In summary, Fortra’s digital brand protection solution is a robust and comprehensive service offering that addresses the multifaceted challenges of brand impersonation in today’s digital landscape. Each service we reviewed—Domain Monitoring, Social Media Protection, and Counterfeit Protection—provides targeted capabilities that together form a cohesive defense strategy for safeguarding brand integrity. Beyond the core services we reviewed, the Brand Protection solution can also include Mobile App Protection, Open Web Monitoring, and Source Code Monitoring, all contributing to comprehensive digital risk management.
Fortra’s PhishLabs Brand Protection service is designed for easy deployment, enabling organizations to integrate the system with minimal operational impact. The service continuously monitors various digital channels, including the open web, dark web, and social media, to detect threats like look-alike domains and counterfeit ads. A user-friendly portal simplifies threat management, allowing security teams to submit, monitor, and escalate threats efficiently.
We like that Fortra handles the entire threat mitigation process, reducing the workload on internal teams. Additionally, Fortra provides expert curation of incident data to ensure customers are only reviewing the legitimate threats that can impact their business, as well as a robust set of tools for incident management, including an executive dashboard, intuitive workflows, and detailed reporting APIs. These tools help organizations integrate digital threat intelligence directly into their existing security operations, enhancing overall situational awareness and response capabilities.
In conclusion, Fortra’s digital brand protection solution is a critical asset for any organization seeking to protect its brand from digital threats. With its blend of automated technology and expert analysis, Fortra offers a reliable, scalable, and effective defense against the growing threats targeting your brand.
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